THE
WESTERN INSTITUTE
FOR
ADVANCED STUDY
GRAND CHALLENGES
We issue Grand Challenges in the fields of mathematics, physics, and biology - or at the intersection of these sciences - then put together a dedicated team of fellows who are highly motivated and well-equipped to pursue the research question. The results undergo a full peer-review process and then are made available to the public.
ONGOING GRAND CHALLENGES
First Grand Challenge: Discovering the physical basis of consciousness
A mechanistic explanation of consciousness has long been elusive to scientists and philosophers. It is simply not understood what perceptual experience is, how cognitive constructs grow over time, and how we might be able to achieve volitional behavior. The goal of this Grand Challenge was to devise a theoretical framework for understanding consciousness in accordance with physical laws, as a natural emergent property of neural computation. This effort successfully generated a theory that explains these three phenomena, by combining the laws of neuroscience and computational physics. Now we are testing the predictions of this theory in computational simulations, in neuroscience laboratories, and in the clinical setting.
Second Grand Challenge: Identifying the key vulnerabilities of cancer cells
A major problem in medicine is that some cancers are resistant to standard treatment with chemotherapy and immunotherapy. New therapeutic approaches often target redundant oncogenes, such as one molecule in a plethora of growth factor receptors, and so cancer cells readily adopt compensatory mechanisms. A fundamental understanding of cancer cell biology, and the key factors that are required for malignant growth and chemotherapeutic resistance, is needed. The goal of this Grand Challenge is to identify a key chokepoint in cancer cells, then develop therapeutic interventions to target that chokepoint. This effort successfully generated a new therapeutic target - stopping the cancer cells from making enough energy to support their malignant growth. Now we are moving our lead drug candidate into clinical trials.
​
Third Grand Challenge: Understanding the emergent structure of the universe
A long-standing challenge in physics is reconciling quantum mechanics and general relativity. At quantum scales, a fundamental uncertainty in the position and momentum of a particle renders difficulty in measuring the curvature of space-time at its exact location. Meanwhile, at cosmological scales, the curvature of space-time appears irregular and dynamic. The goal of this Grand Challenge is to devise a theoretical framework that describes the curvature of the universe using mechanical laws, rather than empirically-derived constants which are not valid at every scale - with a metric tensor that emerges directly from an extended model of particle physics.